Narrative – Page 16 – Kent Fackenthall

My Summer Riding Season Opens with a Giant Bang

Managed to slam in 3 consecutive days of fantastic riding with great peeps to open the summer season.

Saturday I led my usual Radical Edge Donut Roll Beginner Road ride. I only had one rider this week, and Mike’s not exactly beginner, so heading out bright and early at 8, we beat the heat and had some great conditions. A tail wind heading out to Oromocto provided us with a pretty blistering pace that had us chuckling at ourselves at the turnaround knowing full well what we were in for on the way back. Taking turns with short pulls on the way back gave us a good workout into the headwind and we managed to get back pretty quick leaving the remainder of our day for adult boring stuff. The 50k-ish loop combined with my 15k rides to and from the ride start to home got me past the 75k mark on the day and there was still more in the tank.

Sunday was the Third Annual Radical Edge Gravel Grind in support of Special Olympics New Brunswick. I can claim original gangster status as having ridden since the first year, and hopefully it’s a streak I can keep alive, as the event keeps improving. A later start date this year meant no rain and no jackets/baselayers (!) for the first time! Full sun and soaring temps provided a great, if not even a bit warm ride, and the atmosphere and the post-ride feast and cool-down at the new Picaroons Roundhouse was well-appointed and most welcome after a morning baking on the gravel.

I had planned to ride the 75k distance but at the last minute, they were short staffed, so I volunteered to sweep the 50k route with a backpack of tubes and tools to assist anyone that ran into problems out on course. It was a refreshing change to take it easy off the back, take in more scenery and chat more with folks along the way – a real fun experience and reminder of what cycling at it’s core is about as well as what a great riding community we have around New Brunswick and the Maritimes. Best part of all, I had to fix a grand total of ZERO flats! Kudos to everyone for being so prepared! I had wavered back and forth on which bike to take to this year’s ride, my ol’ trusty Surly Cross Check or the Giant Defy Advanced 1. In the end I went with the Defy and was super happy with the way it performed. Stayed comfy all day, and the D-Fuse seatpost in combination with the carbon frame really was great at smoothing out the rough stuff. As a bonus, turns out my Porcelain Rocket top-tube frame bag that I acquired for the Cross Check also fits the Defy. Good to know!

As mentioned in a previous post, I worked with Josh and Jane at Special Olympics New Brunswick this year on some branding and marketing materials for the event and they’ve taken done excellent work and really turned it into a top notch event. Over 160 riders from all over the Maritimes, showed up and were treated to a well-supported ride and atmosphere, locally sourced and catered food, local microbrews and a phat table of door prizes, including a Thule T2 hitch rack. This event has grown and improved every year and is fast becoming a ‘mark your calendar’ ride for the cycling community in our region. Of course the most important part is in the end, over $17,000 was raised to support Special Olympics New Brunswick!

Yours truly with a nice Giant TCX and some banners I designed for Special Olympics NB.

After baking in the sun all morning, Sunday evening I rolled out to Killarney Lake to lead a Rad Edge/Giant Sprockids Fredericton session teaching the next generation of shredders some MTB skills. It was super hot and the kids worked hard, had fun and hassled me the entire time to let them jump in the lake – which I regrettably couldn’t – though I kinda wished I could as well. They did manage to treat me to the ‘Gun Show’ however before the session was over.

Monday evening I put on my Giant Ambassador hat again and headed out to the Giant Bikes MTB Demo at MVP. I’ve been reading online from months about the Trance and Anthem and the differences between the two, trying to figure out which one I’d like – BUT JUST FOR RESEARCH’S SAKE BECAUSE OMG I’M NOT BUYING ANOTHER BIKE RIGHT NOW IN CASE MY WIFE IS READING THIS – HI DEAR. Sigh. If you’re ever in the market for a bike (of any brand really) and have the opportunity to get out and demo some, definitely make an effort. Even if you’re not in the market, riding different bikes over the same trails in the span of an hour or two will make glaringly obvious the differences and is a great way to learn about the features, geometry and handling of bikes. Of the two, I came to the conclusion that I’m an Anthem guy – though if I were to get one – which I’m not (see all caps above) – I’d go with the Anthem SX which is kind of a marriage of the two. I won’t bore everyone here with details of my experience and my reasons for choosing – if you’re interested, hit me up and I can talk/message your ear off. Everyone was having a lot of fun trying out the electric mountain bikes, the Dirt E+ and the Full E+. I wanted to make sure I got rides in on the Trance and Anthem so I ran out of time for that. Honestly, I need to keep burning as many cals as I can when I get out anyway. Rubs belly.

Super stoked that we have such a great riding community here in Fredericton and the surrounding area and a real treat to see it growing over the past few years. I have to give props to the Radical Edge, Giant Bikes and Special Olympics New Brunswick – particularly all the fine humans working hard with each of ’em – for definitely setting my summer riding season off on the best possible foot. Looking forward to many summer miles!

Turn the Page: Eulogy for a Journal

13 Years. That’s a lot of page turning.

It’s a worn out cliché, but it’s worn out because it’s good. If you’re going to ask, I prefer the original Bob Seger version to Metallica’s cover, but to each his own.

For the past 25+ years I’ve been journalling on and off with various levels of consistency. I have all manner of journals from high bling models to the lowly, pedestrian, spiral notebook and find that the construction itself or the price tag isn’t any guarantee of success (whatever your particular idea of ‘journal success’ may be) or satisfaction. I’ve written consistently every day for weeks at a time and alternately not written a word for months. Often I have (and still do have) several journals on the go or ‘unfinished’. I learned some time ago that filling one before starting another is not necessarily a requirement – or my forté.

I’ve bought my own journals and had people gift me some. I have some that started with entirely blank pages, some have inspirational quotes as footers, some lined, some not. I’ve always been – and continue to be – a fan of the tactile feel of writing on paper vs. the computer. Pens/Pencils are an entirely different issue as well, meriting their own post and discussion. I’ve never really ‘journaled’ on the computer. To me the blog is different – it’s a different kind of writing, so I don’t count it. Indeed, many blog entries have started out as handwritten sketches or ideas.

That said, for the past year or two, I’ve had one go-to journal that I’ve been at regularly. In fact, I have become so fond of its particular format, size, and construction that a year or so back, I tracked its maker down on the internet and ordered 4 more. Ambitious and optimistic for sure.

This particular sexy black number is actually much older than 2 years. I’ve been carting it around, seems like forever. Road trips, bike rides, metros, vacations, camping, everyday carry. It too, has seen ebbs and flows in consistency of writing. Large gaps. Sections of just notes, furniture plans, shopping lists, phone numbers. One large chunk of nothing but a catalogue of townhouse rental contact info I copied off the internet when looking for a new family HQ. It was my smart phone before smartphones. There are all manner of loose sheets of paper stuck in various spots and inside the front and back cover. Ticket stubs, notes, receipts – some I no longer even have any idea why I was saving. Looking back at the early entries is like reading something by an entirely different person yet the sensation of time and place hits right in the gut. At the time of this journal’s inception, I was living in an entirely different country, 3 jobs ago, and 2 of my kids had yet to be born.

Sometime around April of last year [2016] as part of a process of trying to increase the amount of reading and writing I do, I decided to try to make a point of writing every day – something, even if just a sentence or a note about what I was reading – an endeavor that I’ve attempted and failed many times before. I haven’t been 100% consistent, but close, and particularly the past 5-6 months or so have been pretty steady. I’m finding that if I place no other expectations on it with regards to subject matter, length, etc, only that there be something every day, it’s become easier to be consistent and the process is one that I’ve come to look forward to.

As I started to draw closer to the end of this particular journal and look back through its entries and the times and places I’ve carried it through, it was a very nostalgic process, due I’m sure to the chronological distance it has covered owing to my stops, starts and many periods of inactivity. Strange how inanimate objects can become vessels of such emotion, feeling, and memory. I mean, it’s just a thing, right?

In addition to the prospect of parting with what had become a daily companion, I was also faced with a tough decision. The 4 new ones I’d ordered were all different colors – how to decide which one was next? I would be spending serious time with this thing investing hard-earned emotional currency – the wrong color at the wrong time could mean certain doom.

The timing was right though, it would seem. The spine on this black one has separated, the page marker is heavily frayed, the pages filling up. The leather cover is soft and peeling in spots, supple and loose. As if that wasn’t sign enough, today, when I opened it up and looked back to the very first entry, there it was – March 17, 2004 – exactly 13 years ago this Friday. The gods had spoken.

It’s only Tuesday now, but there’s still about a page and a half left blank. I’ll pace myself to finish it up on Friday and roll right into the new, blue model. My current pen – one that’s been with the black journal for at least 3 years – will be making the transfer to the new journal. The leather cover is so clean, so pristine, its pages so crisp and vacant.

I’m looking forward to seeing how much I can pack into the new one – and – occasionally visiting with the old one as well.

The Boombox Theory of Zen

When I was in 5th or 6th grade – I don’t remember exactly and I’m terrible with matching time periods and events – no doubt a by product of indulgences I would undertake many years later – I managed to save up one hundred of my very own dollars to go down to the Dart Drug and buy a Panasonic boom box.

This is significant in two ways: one, because if you knew me then – or now, really – you’d know that I’m terrible at saving money; two, because it would form the basis for the lifelong relationship with music I’ve had to this day.

At the time one of my favorite pastimes was to create ‘mix tapes’ – though, not in the fancy way you’re thinking of in the later years of double cassette decks and CDs. This was old school record-the-song-live-from-the-radio mix tape production.

For the uninitiated, this meant when you were hanging out in your room, or doing homework or whatever, if a song came on you liked (or you were lucky enough to have the DJ announce it was coming up) you would FLY across your room – often banging some sort of body part on errant furniture – to get to the radio and hit the magic ‘record/play’ mash of buttons to record the song and capture it on your mixtape forever.

It was never perfect. Often times you’d end up catching the song 10 seconds in. It wasn’t uncommon to get the DJ talking over the beginning or end of your song. There was no ‘fade’. Your song transitions were abrupt, and often would feature a snippet of the previous/following song – which there was a good chance you hated.

But, bottom line, if you could capture it, you had it.

Often times, on weekends, when I knew the Top 40 show was gonna be on, I would sit, right in front of the boom box, and wait, like a hunter waits for the game. This was a good technique as usually, the songs were announced beforehand, but unfortunately the DJ almost always talked over the beginning and end of the tune. There was also the seemingly unending downtime of sitting through songs you couldn’t care less about hoping the next one was a keeper.

The upside however, is that the painstaking process it was has music and many of those songs ingrained in the fiber of my being, and many of those songs to this day are with me on a cellular level, regardless of the fact that I may have never owned the record they were released on. Judas Priest’s ‘You’ve Got Another Thing Coming’ is a perfect example. Every time I hear it, I am transported back to the time I was able to catch it on tape. I still don’t own a Priest album. Never have. Never really listened to any other tunes, but that one – maaaaan, it comes on the radio (or even Muzak somewhere, FFS) and it’s ON.

At the time, amongst your peers, those songs were prizes and status symbols. It was the true origins of street cred as you knew you’d glean some juice from your friends if you were hanging out and they commented on or were envious of the contents of your mix tape.

I wonder how kids of these generations will reflect on their time with music. Will it be as wistful and nostalgic? I’m sure they relate and form experiences with music, but I have a feeling it will be considerably different. As a father of 4, I’ve already been able to observe live case studies in the wild.

With advent of Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube and the myriad of other services – free and premium – that are out there, and an industry and artists who for a variety of reasons discussed at length on the internet, pretty much have to give their music away at this point to remain viable – these generations of music fans have never really had to *work* for their music. I have to admit to being an enabler in this capacity. Apple Music’s family subscription is only a couple of bucks a month more than an individual one (damn you Eddy Cue) so I sprung for it, partly (perhaps foolishly, only time will tell) thinking that sharing music would be a way to connect/bond with my kids. Still though, there’s no time or effort invested. Everything is on-demand.

When I was able to actually buy albums I spent hours pouring over liner notes – lyrics, artist comments, who played what instruments on what song, where it was recorded, who did the artwork. I paid attention to these things and could weave connecting threads between artists. “Oh, that dude also did the artwork for so-and-so’s record.” “Oh, he recorded this at The Record Plant in NYC, so did so-and-so.” I became a fan of not just the music and the musicians but other ‘artists-at-large’ – visual artists, producers, engineers, and created meccas-in-my-mind of the studios/spaces they recorded in. Indeed throughout my life I have often followed the careers of these individuals and who they’ve worked with as much as the musicians that initially brought them to my attention.

Liner notes of today are – with a few exceptions – artist websites and social media feeds. Exclusive videos, ‘album trailers’ and sneak peeks. Access and news from/about artists has never been easier to glean, yet it doesn’t feel the same to me without something tangible.

I also sense these generations of music fans have little concept of the music as a created artwork and that the artist(s) should in some way be compensated for that. I think they have a disconnect between what they want to consume/experience and the livelihood of those making it.

While listening to the radio in the truck the other day (yea, I still listen to the radio in the truck), Heart’s ‘Crazy on You’ came on. Now, I will ashamedly or unashamedly admit to owning several Heart records – and even seeing them in concert – depending on the circumstance, but I never owned an album with this song on it. Still, to this day, it comes on the radio, I know all the breaks, all the lyrics, can air guitar the solos and drum fills. Then I wondered, “How the hell is it that I know this song inside out? How is it that after all these years* I have forgotten so much other crap, yet I have this, perfectly preserved in the vault of my consciousness?” I mean, I still mix up which years my kids were born.

The more I think about it now, maybe this and coming generations of music listeners will have a deep, if not deeper, connection with their music if only for the fact that, really, no one has to listen to music they don’t like anymore. The ability to dial up exactly what you want, when you want it, means you can – in essence – ‘Clockwork Orange’ these songs into your mind to the extent there’s no way they’ll escape. The flip side of that though, is if you don’t have to wade through stuff you don’t like, work or pay for the music, does it lose it’s special value and significance and simply become ‘what is’? Is it then ‘nothing special’?

Shunryu Suzuki writes in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind :

“As Chinese poem says, “There is nothing special. If you visit there, there is nothing special. However Rosan is famous for its misty mountains, and Sekko is famous for its water.” This is Zen. There is nothing special. If you go there, there is nothing special. But people think Rosan is wonderful. It is wonderful to see the range of mountains covered by mist; to see the misty mountains in Rosan is wonderful. And people say it is wonderful to see the water covers all the earth. It is wonderful, they may say, but if you go there, you see just water, and you see just mountain. There is nothing special. But it is a kind of mystery that for the people who have no experience of enlightenment, enlightenment is something wonderful; but if they attain it, that is nothing. Although it is nothing, it is not nothing. Do you understand? For some person — for the mother who has children, to have children is nothing — nothing special. But if she lose her children, what will she feel?”

If this and coming generations have unlimited access to music (and/or art) without any sort of effort to attain it, does it become “nothing special” within the context of their greater experience?

* “Crazy on You” was the first single following the release of their debut album Dreamboat Annie, released in 1976 – and there’s no way I heard it then. I’m guessing it was probably 2-3 years before I heard it and no doubt it’s heavy rotation on ‘classic rock’ radio, which I favored in high school, has been the major contributor to it’s etching on my musical psyche.